Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has penetrated the marketing landscape and is having a profound impact on businesses’ communication strategies. With AI coming under the spotlight, we know surprisingly little about its impact on consumers’ patronage likelihood. This research attempts to address this void by investigating the “just-walk-out” retail technology in cohort with in-store communication. Across three studies, conducted online and in the field, the authors demonstrate that, compared to self-service checkouts, AI-enabled checkouts lead to significantly higher consumers’ patronage likelihood. Furthermore, sensory stimulation stemming from in-store communication (environmental cues including assortment, advertising, and technology) underlies this impact. Importantly, the extent to which consumers perceive AI technology to be threatening is revealed as a boundary condition to these effects. These findings advance our understanding of how AI-enabled checkouts and in-store communication influence consumers’ patronage likelihood and the boundary condition that moderates their impact.

摘要

人工智能（AI）已渗透到营销领域，并且对企业的传播策略产生了深远的影响。随着AI成为人们关注的焦点，我们对其对顾客光顾可能性的影响知之甚少。这项研究试图通过与“店内交流”一起研究“走出去”零售技术来解决这一空白。在在线和现场进行的三项研究中，作者证明，与自助结帐相比，支持AI的结帐可显着提高消费者的光顾可能性。此外，店内交流（环境提示，包括分类，广告和技术）产生的感官刺激是这种影响的基础。重要的，消费者认为AI技术受到威胁的程度是这些影响的边界条件。这些发现使我们进一步了解了启用AI的结帐和店内通信如何影响消费者的光顾可能性以及减轻其影响的边界条件。